


World enough, and time

by Clocketpatch



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-13
Updated: 2010-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 06:34:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clocketpatch/pseuds/Clocketpatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhen, somehow, they meet. Eleven/Romana</p>
            </blockquote>





	World enough, and time

**Author's Note:**

> I'm unanon-ing on this for three reasons: 1. I really always rather liked it, 2. there's basically nothing explicit here for me to be getting all flustered and embarrassed about (but there is a bit, so be warned in advance), and 3. because this was written BEFORE the 5th series started yet manages by utter fluke to tie in so well it boggles my mind. Still no idea when it would be set though.

  
She didn’t know the year. Somewhen in the seventies, she thought, judging by the clothing. The somewhere was harder to judge since she was disoriented and _just how had she got here anyways?_

Romana had stumbled from the fire to find herself in what looked like a change stall. With thin as cardboard walls, a dirty hand-writ _Do Not Shoplift_ sign that had been graffitied with a penis, and a cracked mirror that hung slightly askew.

The crack ran through her left eyebrow when she looked, cutting her pale face in two. She had white hair this time around, close-cropped, and still stained with ash. Her skin was smooth, but thin and stretched. You could see where it was pinned down by creases at the corners of her eyes and mouth.

Romana reached out her hand to touch the glass and trace the sharp new contour of her jaw. The mirror was colder than it should have been. When she pulled back her fingers the tips were blistered.

She was naked and confused. There was a pile of clothing huddled in the corner, a green floral-print dress on a hook. She choose the dress, and put it on without undergarments. It was too big and it slumped over her new flat chest. One of the buttons was missing, giving a peek-a-boo view in the mirror.

Romana tried to straighten herself out. She grabbed a long silk scarf from the pile to drape around her shoulders, another to serve as a belt. It wasn’t perfect. Why did that matter? She’d always been vain. Hadn’t that been her downfall? So they said.

She stepped out of the stall into a cramped second-hand shop. There were three other costumers: two older women bent over the rack of used lingerie, and a mother trying to size by eye and price tag something suitable for the screaming child tugging at her knee.

Romana touched the boy on the head on her way out. And he stopped crying. Watched the strange lady go with red-rimmed eyes. The bored cashier, a teenager reading some horribly inaccurate advice column, didn’t even notice the door bell ding as the pale shop-lifter stepped out.

It was cold on the street. Winter slush crunched under her bare feet. Cars drove by, some slowed, and asked her questions in a strange language.

“Are you alright? Miss?” “Do you need a ride?”

She kept walking, breath blowing in front of her. The cold was better than the fire. She thought of cracks in time, like cracks in glass, and she touched her face again just to make sure it was real, and that it wasn’t shattered into fragments like the world. Her world.

No, don’t think of that. Don’t think of that.

She thought that the air had a certain scent — a bouquet. But this wasn’t Paris, another voice told her, the foreign language was English, and therefore this was —

Bu those thoughts skittered away as well. Broken beer bottles on the snow. Brown, curved, sharp. She detoured off the sidewalk onto the street to avoid them. Nearly got hit by a car and cut her foot anyways. Red on the snow. More of a table wine, she thought.

She turned down an alley, found a locked chain fence and climbed it. The thin links stuck to her toes. How many words were there for cold? She passed some dumpsters and thought about sleeping there. Or eating there. She moved on. A few more fences and side streets and she’d found a residential area. She hopped a short wood fence into an anonymous back yard. The fence was pale blue, paint peeling away to off-white beneath. The garden was all off-white under the smog-tinged snow. There were bare bushes and a heavy conifer. She sat underneath it, shivering.

A long time later she was woken up. Snow dropped onto her shoulder as a bird took off. She heard a crow cawing. Its cry split open the sky. The night was new, like her. Glowing with street lamps. Frost in her hair. She blinked, realising that she wasn’t alone.

She stood up.

There was a man in front of her, and he was familiar, somehow. He was young and awkward. A swoop of hair half covered his face (why did he still need to hide in plain sight?), and his pose made it look like each of his limbs had its own mind on where to stand, or flop. But he was sturdy. He was dressed like a professor, or a — what was the word? — geek? Nerd? Bird?

No, that was the crow. She wished it would stop cawing.

He was the owner of this garden she supposed, and the house. It was small, blue over white like the fence, rather shabby, one-story. He was come to tell her off, she thought. But she found it hard to picture him in that house, in this garden, carefully tending plants and re-plastering cracks. Stuck in a mundane, low-income life. Fixing things. Trying to make it work.

He did fix things, she thought. Maybe. She could see the tracks his boots had made in the snow and they didn’t lead from the house. He’d come over the fence too.

Oh, he was holding out a hand. Should she take it?

“You must be cold.”

“Not really.”

“You aren’t wearing any shoes.”

He was looking at her hard, like he didn’t quite understand. Like she was a puzzle. She was good at puzzles.

“There weren’t any my size. There was one pair, but it really wasn’t my style.”

He squinted and cocked his head. That was a clue, she thought, but she wasn’t sure where it fit. This was a mystery to both of them.

“I’m not wearing other things,” she said offhandedly. Not really concerned, not really noticing her words. They were just words after all. She was looking up at the stars and trying to configure her position among them. Earth. Yes. That was right. But she’d already known that. Hadn’t she? “The selection was really quite atrocious.”

The man pulled out some device, a bleeping tube, and waved it over her. She shivered. He pulled the tube back and frowned at it, gave it a shake, and frowned again.

“I think…” He looked at her sharply. “Who are you?”

“It’s cold now,” she whispered.

“Come with me,” he said.

The blue box wasn’t far, and she pet its side before going in. This was familiar also. The inside was bigger — relative dimensions, tesseracts, of course, all her Academy classes were coming back. She’d had a double first. This was a type-40.

Her feet were sore so she sat down. The brass roundels were easy on her eyes. She followed them around. There was a mezzanine gallery above her, hung down from some invisible second floor.

“You’ve redecorated,” she said.

“I had to.”

“Everything changes,” she said. “Everything burns and turns to dust.”

She touched the left side of her face again, compulsively. That’s where the Dalek’s gun had struck her, before the crack opened, before she fell into the snow.

He caught her hand and held it, traced the patterns of her veins beneath the frozen skin.

“Not this,” he said.

He was crouched in front of her, watching so intensely.

She pulled his hand under the sagging collar of her dress, to lie flat against her frail chest, one heart, then the other. Both still beating. He pulled her hand back for affirmation, and, even though his suit was thicker, she could still feel the pulse.

“Who are we now?” she asked.

“I thought I was alone,” he said. “For so long…” he shook his head. “It’s a new life. We can do whatever we want. Go wherever we want. Be whoever we want.”

“I want to be who we were.”

“Except that.”

He stood up, and she followed, not wanting to lose him to the shadows above. The darkness was always waiting, she knew that now. She’d escaped, but it would come back. There was only one sure way to ward it off, and she wasn’t sure she could live that life again.

Like he’d said, that way was lost to them now. They had to start again, to find new paths.

The weak knot holding the scarf around her waist gave way. The shawl protecting her shoulders was long since lost. The tiny buttons down her front were easily undone, by nimble fingers so much younger than her own. The thin, wet dress crumpled around her feet. The tiny, sad daisies printed on it were patched with melting snow. The brass light gave her naked body some colour. An illusion of warmth. She shivered.

He hugged her tight before removing his own armour. It took longer because he had so many more layers.

Age had always been an illusion between them; age and wisdom. She liked to think she would have grown up into an interesting person without him. She liked to think that she had always had freedom, of a sort, in her thoughts. She liked to think she didn’t owe him so much, because that had made it easier to send him to his death.

He stroked her face, the line of her jaw and the folds of her ear, her short, spiked hair, sharp with frost. She stroked his cheek, his chest, the strong, hard lines of his body, the age that he kept hidden. They both drew maps, star charts, lines in the sand. Maybe the tide would wash this all away in the morning.

Somewhere, in between the waves, she forgave him.

Sometime, before the mirror broke, she hoped he would forgive her too.

 

 

_fin_  


* * *

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
This story archived at <http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=37310>


End file.
